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Epona News – November 15, 2012

For a limited time, world renowned ambient music composer and musician Steve Roach is offering the Epona community a 20% discount on all titles through his website at www.steveroach.com. Many of you have experienced Steve’s music while at Epona. This discount also includes Linda’s books. Just mention Epona in the suggestions-note area of the order form and your total before shipping will be adjusted. If you have questions about the music or what titles might be good for your particular needs please email Steve directly at info@steveroach.com.

As the New Year begins, Eponaquest is proud to present its first fundraising event for a unique and worthy non-profit:

Hoofbeats, Heartbeats….Life as One Winter Stories, Horses, Nature, and Beyond

This special event, a fundraiser for Navajo summer youth camps offered by the Navajo non-profit Pollen Circles, will offer participants the chance to hear sacred creation stories that can be told only in the winter, as well as experience the powerful origin story of how the horse was created and brought to earth by the Navajo hero twins who saved the world from dark forces with the help of their mother and father, plus the elements of nature, including the horse.

Navajo (Diné) medicine man Harrison Jim will lead us on a profound journey into the heart of his tribe’s rich cultural heritage, sharing transformational stories, songs, and blessings. He is joined by Gino Antonio and Molly Bigknife Antonio, the Native American artist/teacher husband-wife team who established Pollen Circles; an organization that works with tribal youth and other native peoples, including soldiers returning from war, who benefit from their approach to healing and community building through traditional ways.

“We will tell stories from a Navajo perspective around nature and the elements,” Gino says. “We will also sing some songs with the horses, tell origin stories of the horses, their relations to four directions, and their sacred relationship in our lives and expand these teachings to the natural elements: the wind, the rain, plants, animals, etc. We will begin with a blessing to focus and center the group for the upcoming activities. This blessing connects the group with the natural elements that assist the presenters with information that they are sharing. This blessing also provides protection for everyone involved. The group will start to focus these blessings and teachings back into their own lives at a certain point. To fulfill this circle, there will be closing prayers and songs.”

Linda offers a bit of information on how this event came to be:

It is a real honor to have Harrison Jim and the Antonios share these sacred stories and songs. Two years ago, we collaborated on the highly successful workshop Horses of the Four Directions where all ten of the participants were deeply inspired by a melding of Navajo traditions and Epona innovations. But I also wanted people to have the opportunity to immerse themselves directly in the tribe’s sacred stories, songs, and blessings. This fundraiser offers people unique and unprecedented access to the wisdom of an accomplished and compassionate medicine man who has spent his life bringing his rich cultural heritage back to life after the atrocities suffered in the mid-twentieth century when the U.S. Government tried to wipe out Native American traditions. Harrison was one of those children taken away from his parents and forced to attend an “Indian school” where attempts were made to eradicate all traces of Native American culture and religion. In this overtly oppressive “educational” system, students were shamed, often abused, and at the very least, had their mouths washed out with soap if they spoke their own language. Harrison refused to relinquish his soul, though his journey was at times hard. Even so, he came back to the tribe, studied with elders, and became fluent in his tribe’s language and spiritual traditions.

The Navajo stories and songs he now shares feel like a healing balm for the soul, bringing everyone who hears them back to a profound connection with nature and spirit. Gino and Molly Bigknife Antonio have made great strides in further renewing these traditions, bringing sacred and practical traditional skills to children through their summer camps. I hope you will consider supporting this important work of renewal and transformation by experiencing a bit of it yourself during this special event.

Hoofbeats, Heartbeats….Life as One will be held at the Epona Center at Eagle Way in Amado, AZ. All proceeds will go to the youth camps set to be held on the Navajo reservation in summer 2013 and to the health and support of the horses who roam the land at their basecamp. (Eponaquest is donating use of the center and organizational support for this event. Please contact Sue Smades at info@eponaquest.com or 520-455-5908 for information and registration.)

For those individuals interested in arriving early or extended your stay beyond the fundraiser to do work at Eponaquest with Linda Kohanov and the Epona herd there are a couple of opportunities available for you. First, there are still three remaining spots in the January 10-13, 2013 Black Horse Wisdom workshop. This powerful advanced program is for people who would like to exercise their intuitive abilities through reflective and active engagement with horses, journeying, and interactions with mythic equine images and archetypes. Linda will coach participants in multiple intuitive/creative techniques, including accessing the Horse Ancestors (the collective wisdom of horses), simple yet profound animal communication techniques with members of the Epona herd, visionary/journeying experiences with music, and ways of using Linda’s Way of the Horse wisdom cards (art by Kim McElroy) and guidebook for personal reflection and guidance.

Or you may be interested in the newest addition to the Eponaquest workshop schedule:

Harnessing the Invisible: A Transformational Approach to Leadership, Innovation, and Authentic Community Building

January 19-22, 2013

Cost: $2000.00 ($1500.00 if you register by December 15th)

As Linda Kohanov observes in her upcoming book The Power of the Herd, “Much information categorized as ‘spiritual’ is nonverbal and/or un-photographable, not supernatural. Nonetheless there will always be an element of mystery to the invisible, un-nameable forces that move people to perform great deeds, leaving a sense of awe and wonder in their wake. This is especially true of men and women who tap the triumvirate of power, vision, and innovation, spurring leaps in consciousness and behavior that affect generations.”

Linda devotes several chapters to issues related to visionaries, including those who became religious figures, “to understand how we can move beyond crucifying or worshipping creative, inspired thinkers, artists, and social activists—to become innovators and leaders ourselves.” In this effort, direct work with horses becomes the short-cut to developing the combination of imagination, endurance, courage, compassion, and power that will help you follow your dreams, communicate your vision, and rally others to manifest a world where everyone’s talents are valued, and everyone’s vulnerabilities are not only supported, but transformed into strengths!

This workshop is for people who want to develop a deeper connection to their own spirit and a more soulful connection to others, whether this quest is reflected in an established religion, a formal spiritual practice, or a desire to connect with something larger than the modern human ego affords. Those who would like to bring compassion, vision, and non-predatory power into business, politics, and social activism contexts will also learn skills to bring people together for a common cause.

Ultimately, as Linda stresses in her book, this work is about transforming “the power plays, traumas, and relational habits we must alter to move forward productively as free, empowered people. Here we stretch beyond ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ agendas, looking at behavior patterns that wreak havoc beneath the surface of all cultural, religious, business, political, scientific, and philosophical persuasions.”

Beyond these crucial social intelligence skills, however, this workshop gives you even more tools to become an innovative force for change. As Linda explains in a chapter titled “The Invisible:”

True visionaries don’t just notice what was previously hidden or ignored by the culture at large, they help others to see it and use it. Communicating the unspeakable becomes an essential part of the innovator’s job, as does handling the frustration of being misunderstood, and struggling, constantly, to create more clarity. We’re not just talking art and religion here. The classic “finger pointing at the moon” dilemma most certainly applies to countless other disciplines, especially those related to leadership presence and social intelligence. In this respect, horses are emerging as reliable catalysts for expanded vision, empowerment, and the recognition of other, currently un-nameable skills necessary for people to excel.

Ulrike Dietmann — a talented writer who established her own Epona-based equine-facilitated learning practice in Germany — teaches creativity, leadership, and personal development skills that help others sense and follow their own unique callings. Her newly-translated book, On the Wings of Horses: A Hero’s Journey into the Heart of the Creature says it best: “Animals reflect our internal states. Their behavior follows an invisible energy. This is something that astonishes me again and again. They make the invisible visible.”

As strong, intensely mindful, non-predatory, social beings, horses are the ultimate guides on our quest to discover a more balanced form of power while cultivating “freedom-through-relationship,” a concept that has parallels in Taoist, Buddhist, and Christian religions, one that horses easily teach receptive humans—once we know how to listen to their silent wisdom and practice it in mutually supportive communities where individual and group needs are taken into consideration.

Those who attend this workshop will receive a pre-publication copy of The Power of the Herd (due to be published in March 2013), which will be used as the textbook for this seminar—and a way to take these innovative skills and perspectives home to your family, colleagues, and communities.

Individuals who register for both Hoofbeats, Heartbeats….Life as One and either Black Horse Wisdom or Harnessing the Invisible will receive an additional $100 discount off their Epona workshop tuition.